


The Sum of Our Tears

by PazithiGallifreya



Category: Galavant (TV)
Genre: Don’t copy to another site, F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-02 09:14:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19195945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PazithiGallifreya/pseuds/PazithiGallifreya
Summary: Richard is finding that fitting into the whole "One True King" thing is a little harder to sort out than he'd like. Roberta just wants him to be happy.





	The Sum of Our Tears

We are all the sum of our tears. Too little and the ground is not fertile, and nothing can grow there. Too much, the best of us is washed away.  
  
\- "The Wheel of Fire", Babylon 5

 

* * *

 

 

Roberta stroked her husband's hair slowly, running the strands through her fingers, watching the fading late afternoon sunlight catch in the silver strands intermingled with brown. His breathing was slow and even now, although she knew he was not asleep. His nose still twitched every so often, or his mouth would pull to one side in some quirk of an expression she could guess at from where his face was half-pressed into her chest where they were wound around one another in bed at the moment.

He was settling into the role of “One True King” in fits and starts, as awkwardly as he ever did anything, torn between what he wanted to do and what he felt he was expected to do. Galavant and Isabella had made a habit of dropping in at regular intervals, “just to check up on Richard” (as though he were one of the seven children that Isabella could not stop talking about planning on having) and Roberta was not sure how she felt about that. Galavant was still Richard's dearest friend, despite their checkered history, but she wasn't always greatly pleased with the resulting existential crises that arose from Richard's desires to impress him. Richard had finally separated himself from Gareth's (misguided, in Roberta's estimation) tutelage, only to replace him with Galavant, who was better but only in some ways.

Richard sniffled again and Roberta dropped another kiss onto the crown of his head in anticipation of more tears, but he settled again after a moment. _Tears._ That was the great sin, wasn't it? Galavant would shake his head and mumble something about Richard's manhood going missing again, and Gareth had ever only scoffed, and Richard would always burn red in embarrassment, sometimes lashing out at everyone around him as a result. Were a few tears really that shameful? _Men_ , she thought, with no small amount of venom. Sometimes she wished that she and Richard could find their own isolated cottage, far away from everyone else, but Richard would never agree to it. He took this One True King business seriously.

Richard still cried, frequently and quite freely at times. It was something that, to Roberta, seemed utterly fundamental to him, and she could not really even imagine him otherwise, nor did she wish to. Richard was her best friend. Richard was the King. Richard befriended a dragon. Richard liked sweets, played with animals, played (sometimes rather overly enthusiastically) with any children who crossed his path, was her husband, had a rather pleasing singing voice, and Richard cried. Not over his clothing anymore (thank heavens, because even Roberta could agree _that_ was a bit silly), but out of frustration quite often, or in sympathy, or from genuine sorrow, and Roberta could not see any fault in it. So what if he felt deeply, at times? Would it be better if he were made of stone? Her husband had been tasked with brokering peace between seven realms that had been at each other's throats on and off for centuries, and that was a job that required some bit of understanding of human hearts and minds. The hero sword had proved to be a burdensome thing, however much Richard swung it about like a boy playing a game of knights and knaves. He might lark about and play like a boy, and might even be quite naive in some ways, but those foolish enough to think that Richard was genuinely stupid or a pushover had on more than one occasion learned the error of those assumptions.

They'd gone that very morning to a village where two rival armies (if you could call a couple disorganized packs of mercenaries and bored soldiers _armies_ ) had descended upon one another, resulting in a load of hapless peasants being slaughtered in the middle. Richard had done quite well for most of the day, all things considered – his attempts at making the rivals sit down and speak to one another had nearly been successful, until some fool on one side had lost his nerve and sent an arrow into the other side. At that point, it had come down to Richard and a few of the guards and retainers he'd amassed in recent months cracking skulls until everyone was too concussed to know which end of their sword to pick up.

The dust had settled and they had been talking to the idiots who seemed to be in command and explaining that they would be packing up and heading off in opposite directions post-haste when Richard saw them, and that had been the King's undoing. The dead toddler laying in his dead mother's arms in a drainage ditch where they'd fallen after being run through with a single sword-thrust was just the last straw, Roberta thought. It had been a terrible thing to look at for anyone, but Richard could not stomach the sight of it for even a moment and had made a strangled choking sound, then fled on foot before anyone could think to stop him.

Roberta had calmly ordered Richard's men to see that the King's orders were carried out and had followed the trail of her husband. Thankfully he had not gone terribly far, and she'd gotten him back onto his horse and they'd returned home on their own. The men could find their own way back, and she'd been quite happy that they'd not returned too swiftly.

“Why can't I just be more like Galavant, Roberta? _He_ wouldn't have run away crying.... like a... like _me_.”

Roberta held her breath for a moment, pushing down an impulse to swear in a decidedly un-queenly fashion. It would only upset Richard, anyway, and that was the last thing she wanted to do after the day they'd just had. Instead, she shifted, wiggling until she could kiss him instead, hoping it would distract him, at least for a time, from his constant self-recrimination. There was a constant ache in Roberta's heart where Richard was concerned. She wanted to strangle his parents for dismissing and ignoring their “surplus” second son, and Richard's nasty older brother for good measure. All three were long dead, though, and their necks beyond her grasp. The damage was already done, regardless – Richard had a fundamental disgust for himself that Roberta could at times soothe, but seemingly never erase.

A few long minutes of their tussling had Richard rolled onto his back now, and Roberta draped over him. They were still mostly clothed, having chucked their armor and shoes before collapsing together on the bed after arriving some hours earlier. The proverbial dam had burst once they were finally alone and in private, Richard sobbing into her neck for what had felt like an age and a half. _I'm their king, Bobbie_ , he'd lamented, _I should be able to protect them_. She'd learned over the past year that there was little use in platitudes in such moments, that no “You can't be everywhere at once”s and “You're doing your best”s would assuage her husband's guilt while he was in the throes of it. Those conversations could be had, but only much later.

Tomorrow, perhaps, or the day after. In this moment, however... the thin tunic still on Richard left more than enough of a gap for her to have ample access to his neck and collarbones. She'd been quite delighted to discover how exquisitely sensitive Richard's throat was. Ticklish, even, if she wasn't careful, although making him squeal in that fashion was quite pleasing in its own way. He sighed beneath her and she could feel his heart beating and nearly cried herself. His arms wrapped around her and she thought perhaps they were getting somewhere when he suddenly tensed beneath her.

“Do you love me, Bobbie?”

She paused and leaned up, bracing her elbows on the mattress on either side of him. She looked down into his eyes, wide and red-rimmed and still somewhat watery. She blinked, taken off guard by his simple but somewhat shocking inquiry. _We've been married over a year, why on earth would he think...?_

“Of course I love you, more than anything in this world, Pup-pup.”

She watched as his face contorted through a rapid series of expressions, all too fleeting to fully catch. In the end he broke eye contact and gazed around the room, settling nowhere in particular. She considered resuming where she'd left off, but discarded the idea. He was more shaken than she'd assumed, it seemed, and her usual tactic of distracting him was apparently not going to work today.

Roberta slid to the side with one soft kiss to his temple and laid her head on his shoulder, contenting herself with one hand slipped into his tunic to rest over his heart. “Pup-pup, I know today was difficult but you really can't blame yourself for what those mercenaries were doing--”

“Oh Bobbie, I know that. I just... Why am I like this? Why do lose my wits over everything? Gareth spent years telling me to toughen up and even Galavant always says--”

Roberta's own frustrations finally overtook her last shred of patience and she quickly rolled into a sitting position, throwing a pillow across the room. “Galavant isn't the King, Richard, _you_ are. Do you ever think maybe there's a reason for that? That maybe you aren't supposed to be like bloody Galavant, or Gareth, or whatever other pretentious, posturing, emotionally constipated jackass you're determined to put on a pedestal?”

Roberta scrubbed her hands over her face, regretting her words as soon as she'd said them. She couldn't bring herself to look at her husband in this moment, although she could see in her mind's eye the exact expression of shock he no doubt wore at the moment. She sighed, dropping back heavily onto their overstuffed feather mattress. “I'm sorry, Richard, I just-- I didn't marry Galavant, or Gareth, and I would never have wanted to. I married _you_.” Finding a shred of courage, Roberta finally turned and looked somewhat askance at her husband. He was staring at a fixed point on the canopy over their bed, his mouth slightly parted as though some sort of response was trying to escape but couldn't quite make the journey. She waited for him to say something. _Please say something_. Roberta now wished she hadn't tossed her pillow away, because she now also wished she could smother herself with it. _Your mother always told you that loose tongue would get you into trouble, Roberta_ , she thought to herself.

Roberta sighed and pressed herself up against her husband again. He absentmindedly wrapped an arm around her shoulders out of habit but still seemed lost in his own thoughts and Roberta didn't quite know what to do.

“You wouldn't come with me when I went with Galavant to save Isabella and stop Madelena.”

“What? I know that was a mistake, Richard, and I truly am sorry for being such a coward, I know I should have been more supportive, as I told you last year...”

Richard shook his head. “No, I'm not... That's not what I mean, Bobbie. I'm not... I really didn't blame you in the end, because you were right – I'm not a warrior. I'm still not, like, _super_ good with a sword, and back then I was utterly pathetic! I wouldn't have come with me either, if I weren't myself, I mean... Well you know what I mean, don't you? I just...” Richard sighed and turned toward Roberta, throwing one leg over hers and wrapping himself around her, burying his nose in her hair. When he resumed, it was barely a whisper and Roberta had to strain to hear him. “I want to be someone you can respect, Bobbie, not.. not some... oh, what was it Gareth said? 'A bloody great pudding' was one of them, I'm certain... 'big girl's blouse' was the other one he said all the time. You deserve a husband you don't have to be embarrassed of, Bobbie. You deserve--.”

Roberta squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to let her own tears slip free, and feeling a bit of a hypocrite for it. She kissed Richard again, gently this time, cutting him off before she could give in to her own sobbing session. _Oh I could kill Gareth, if he weren't off chasing Madelena somewhere. May he never return!_

“Oh, Pup-pup you still don't get it. I love you, and I've loved you since we were children. You might have been a bit spoiled --” Richard scoffed but Roberta plowed ahead before he could interrupt. “-- _fine_ , maybe more than a bit spoiled, but you were a gentle soul even then, and that's what I've always loved about you. I don't want to be married to a man who can look at a murdered mother and child and feel nothing. That would be _horrible_.” Roberta suddenly lost the fight against her own tears but at this point she didn't give a rat's hind end.

Richard's arms tightened around her. “...Oh. Well, um... alright then, I suppose.”

Roberta couldn't help but laugh at that declaration. Richard smiled at her, his eyes still looking a bit watery, but she wouldn't have changed him for the world.


End file.
